Opinion: What Republican candidates should say about Donald Trump

President Donald Trump is distancing himself from his former lawyer, Michael Cohen, in the wake of Cohen's guilty plea to eight charges, including campaign finance violations that Cohen says he carried out in coordination with Trump. (Aug. 23)
AP

As the midterm elections move closer, everyone seems to be wondering whether the elections are going to be about education or health care or roads or taxes. In fact, voters are likely to make their mind up on state and local races based on one factor — the individual currently occupying the West Wing of the White House.

Given Republican candidates’ difficulty in trying to embrace certain parts of Trumpism while, at the same time, distancing themselves from its worst aspects, I have put together a sample speech for any GOP congressional candidate to use in the upcoming few months. (And all for the low cost of free-ninety-nine!)

Welcome, everyone, and thank you for that humbling introduction. I’m honored to be here at the (insert parade, festival, bingo party) — I remember my old (insert name of potentially fictional relative) telling me how much he enjoyed his days here as a child.

I know you all have questions about the elections coming up. Certainly, you’re all concerned about the primary issue that hangs over this campaign season: “Am I going to get to meet Kim Kardashian if Kayne West campaigns here?”

But seriously, I know a lot of you are Donald Trump fans. I know you’re fed up with the way things have been run in Washington, D.C., and you wanted someone who was going to drop a truth bomb on the government establishment. And if you wanted someone to shake things up, you certainly got more than you expected.

Of course, Donald Trump has been good in some very important respects. We all know about his appointment of rock-solid conservative Supreme Court justices. You probably have more money in your pocket because of the tax cuts he signed into law. Quite often, he takes down insufferable people in a cathartic way we would all like to.

But any honest Republican would have to admit that there has been a downside to Trump. I know other conservative candidates have been afraid to talk about these things, worried about being labeled “disloyal.” But we can’t continue to fix what’s wrong unless we give Americans a look at how good things can be when they’re going right.

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In terms of policy, Trump has certainly been better than Hillary Clinton would have been. But candidates ignoring blatant mistakes made by members of their own party is a big reason why people no longer trust politicians — what’s wrong is wrong no matter who does it.

It is this hypocrisy that is crippling our political system. When Barack Obama increased tariffs on foreign goods, Republicans howled — now, many of us are praising Trump for similar job-killing policies. For decades, the GOP was defined by its opposition to Russian strongmen like Vladimir Putin; now, criticizing Trump for taking Putin’s side over American intelligence agents is seen as un-American.

As your (congressman, senator), I will support our president when he deserves it and try to push him to be a bit better when I can. I will adhere to a positive vision of conservatism, one in which every American has the freedom to live his or her life according to their own wishes. Presidents aren’t what makes America great — it’s the people who live here that do.

That is why it is time we get government out of the lives of those people to allow them to unlock their potential. Yes, we always need to care for those incapable of taking care of themselves — but the best way to lift people out of poverty is a free-market system that gives individuals the agency to move themselves up the social ladder with hard work and ingenuity, and allows them to pass down the fruits of their labor to future generations. Hopefully, everyone in this room is going to be around well after Donald Trump’s presidency ends — we need policies that will make sure we are free no matter what presidents come and go.

More than loyalty to individuals, our system requires loyalty to principles. And those principles, as once explained by Margaret Thatcher, are that "the individual is more important than the system” and that “individual enterprise is the mainspring of all progress."

In order to make America great again, we can’t rely on The System, or a single politician — we can only rely on ourselves. Let’s get to work.

That’s all my time.

Thank you for listening.

Editor's note: This is Christian Schneider's last column for the Journal Sentinel; we thank him for his thoughtful work over the past six years.